Thoughts from the interface of science, religion, law and culture

After spending several years touring the country as a stand up comedian, Ed Brayton tired of explaining his jokes to small groups of dazed illiterates and turned to writing as the most common outlet for the voices in his head. He has appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show and the Thom Hartmann Show, and is almost certain that he is the only person ever to make fun of Chuck Norris on C-SPAN.

EVENTS

Morris Explains. Again.

Dick Morris is still struggling to explain why his predictions for a Romney landslide on election day were so flagrantly wrong. And during an appearance on the Sean Hannity show, he made what I think is an important admission, even while claiming that he really believed it:

“I called it as I saw it from the polling, and I did the best I could — and I also worked very hard for Romney…I spoke about what I believed, and I think that there was a period of time when the Romney campaign was falling apart, people were not optimistic, nobody thought there was a chance of victory. And I felt that it was my duty at that point to go out and say what I said. And at the time that I said it, I believe I was right.”

I believe him when he says that he made those predictions in order to help the Romney campaign, but I don’t believe him when he says he really believed what he was saying. Why? Because Morris was a campaign manager and strategist, and a pretty good one. There’s no way in hell he could actually have believed that. In an identical situation where he was actually being paid as a strategist, there’s no way he would have told his client that he was going to win in a landslide.

I can guarantee you that Romney’s campaign managers did not believe that they were going to win in a landslide. They probably did believe that they could win a very narrow victory if everything broke right for them, and the polls were close enough for that to be a realistic possibility, but only someone completely blind to reality and borderline delusional could have believed it would be an easy win.

Comments

…but only someone completely blind to reality and borderline delusional could have believed it would be an easy win.

You know as well as I do that there’s no shortage of such people in the PoG. And Romney’s total failure to come up with a timely and decent concesion speech (not to mention his choice of Donald Trump for BFF, and other things) proves that he’s one of those delusional fools. As does his recent whining about “gifts” to undeserving darkies and sluts who stole the election from “Real America.”

And of course, Dick Morris is part of the problem: an alleged expert telling them what they want to hear and enabling them to continue in their delusional bubble-verse.

And he thinks that reinforcing the delusions of evil and dishonest people is his DUTY?! This guy is even scummier than I’d previously thought.

I think you are misunderstanding the definition of the word “right” here. He believes he was right in that a Romney victory was the “right” (i.e. desired) outcome and his statement was the “right” (i.e. most effective) way to make that happen.

I think a lot of the republican craziness can be explained by believing their underlying ideology is right and thus anything said in support of that ideology is by definition right, whether or not it is true.

I still think the best example of how delusional and completely out of touch Romney was came during the third debate when he thought he was pinning down The President on not calling the Libya attacks terrorism. This had been under discussion for weeks, with many people describing the speech the next day. I find it hard to believe than nobody on Team Romney made a point of bringing it to Mitt’s attention that Obama had used the term ‘act of terror’ the very next day. At the time I was stunned at what I was seeing; now trying to describe it, I still am. I cannot imagine a scenario where Romney was not told this; hence, delusional.

Morris then explained why the polls “were precious to him and that he couldn’t give them up.” He claimed that Obama was tricksy and could not be trusted. He was last seen on the edge of mount doom wrestling with flesh-colored creature named Carl rove. It is believed that both fell to their fiery deaths.

I believe him when he says that he made those predictions in order to help the Romney campaign, but I don’t believe him when he says he really believed what he was saying. Why? Because Morris was a campaign manager and strategist, and a pretty good one.

But then Mitt is a great businessman too, and you do not make 250 million by ignoring numbers.

Yet he did. He ignored numbers in the media, and he believed his team’s unskewed internal polls

So while you are willing to cut slack for Morris’s stupidity, I am not.

I still think the best example of how delusional and completely out of touch Romney was came during the third debate when he thought he was pinning down The President on not calling the Libya attacks terrorism. This had been under discussion for weeks, with many people describing the speech the next day. I find it hard to believe than nobody on Team Romney made a point of bringing it to Mitt’s attention that Obama had used the term ‘act of terror’ the very next day. At the time I was stunned at what I was seeing; now trying to describe it, I still am. I cannot imagine a scenario where Romney was not told this; hence, delusional.

The Washington Times reported what the president stated the day after the attack as proof he didn’t refer to terrorism. The readers commenting on that article acted as if this was a refutation of what President Obama said in the debate and a validation that Mr. Romney was the one telling the truth.

That’s it!I’ve seen the light!
It’s a conspiracy!
There’s no vendetta between Dick Morris and the Clintons: it’s a smokescreen used by the democratic party before they sent him in GOPland to act as a double-agent provocateur/saboteur. That’s why he is so reliably wrong: in truth, he’s as good as Nate Silver at predicting outcomes, but he keeps telling bullshit in conservative media, and conservative believe him because they think is a bitter, disgruntled former democrat who’s in it for the revenge against Hillary while in fact he’s here to lead them to a wall!

I think the Romney team, and Republicans in general, believed they were going to win in part because of how much they hated and despised Obama, and simply could not conceive nor accept the possibility that they could be beaten by him.

Raging Bee is quite possibly right here. There have been sources from inside the Romney camp saying that they totally expected to win — when a realistic reading of the polls at best said that they might win. As RB points out, he had no concession speech planned. At all. In addition, there is word that they had booked a whole big fireworks display for election night and had every intention of using it.

That’s the new problem for the GOP: As the party becomes more and more saturated with people who really believe the lies, they collectively lose their ability to see the truth. The cynical liars are being gradually outnumbered by the gullible fools, and that’s bad news for them.